With 500 behind him the question becomes: How much does Pujols have left?

April 23, 2014

Updated 3:27 p.m.

1 of 1

Angels star Albert Pujols watches the flight of his 500th career home run as it leaves Nationals Park during the fifth inning Tuesday. It was his eighth home run of the season, an April outburst that has the Angels optimistic they are finally seeing the Pujols of old. PATRICK SMITH, GETTY IMAGES

Angels star Albert Pujols watches the flight of his 500th career home run as it leaves Nationals Park during the fifth inning Tuesday. It was his eighth home run of the season, an April outburst that has the Angels optimistic they are finally seeing the Pujols of old. PATRICK SMITH, GETTY IMAGES

500 HOMER CLUB

Rank

Player (yrs, age)

HR

1

Barry Bonds (22)

762

2

Hank Aaron* (23)

755

3

Babe Ruth* (22)

714

4

Willie Mays* (22)

660

5

A. Rodriguez (20, 38)

654

6

Ken Griffey (22)

630

7

Jim Thome (22)

612

8

Sammy Sosa (18)

609

9

Frank Robinson* (21)

586

10

Mark McGwire (16)

583

11

H. Killebrew* (22)

573

12

Rafael Palmeiro (20)

569

13

Reggie Jackson* (21)

563

14

Manny Ramirez (19)

555

15

Mike Schmidt* (18)

548

16

Mickey Mantle* (18)

536

17

Jimmie Foxx* (20)

534

18

Willie McCovey* (22)

521

Frank Thomas* (19)

521

Ted Williams* (19)

521

21

Ernie Banks* (19)

512

Eddie Mathews* (17)

512

23

Mel Ott* (22)

511

24

Gary Sheffield (22)

509

25

Eddie Murray* (21)

504

26

Albert Pujols (14,34)

500

*In Hall

of Fame

WASHINGTON - The celebration of Albert Pujols’ 500th home run is a celebration of Pujols’ Past, as Charles Dickens might have called him.

When Pujols hit two home runs Tuesday to become the 26th player to join one of baseball’s most exclusive clubs, the accompanying career highlight reel included Pujols slugging along the road to history, mostly in a St. Louis Cardinals uniform.

While that player has won two World Series rings and virtually guaranteed himself a spot in the Hall of Fame, Pujols Present and Pujols Future are the ones most relevant to the Angels.

Pujols’ current and future performance is all that matters to Angels fans and the franchise that owes him more than $200 million through 2021. Even the most optimistic Angels fans or executives concede that Pujols will decline, perhaps sharply, before the end of his deal.

The questions are, how soon and how much? In the meantime, how high can he climb on the sport’s most famous leaderboard?

“I don’t really try to look at the future,” said Pujols, 34. “I try to look at every day, every second I breathe. Hopefully, I wake up tomorrow and I can tell my wife and my kids I love them, and that’s it. I’ll come do my work and do what I love to do. But I don’t like to really look into the future, because it just doesn’t make any sense.”

OK, how about the present?

“I’m right where I want to be right now,” Pujols said, adding that he believes he is “the same hitter” as in his heyday with the Cardinals.

David Freese, his teammate in St. Louis from 2009-11 and now with the Angels, said he doesn’t see much difference in this Pujols for one major reason.

“It’s great to see his legs under him,” Freese said. “Your legs are a big part of being able to hit consistently and with power.”

Last season, the year that prompted so many to begin typing his career obit, Pujols played with a sore right knee and plantar fasciitis in his left foot. Any analysis of what to expect from Pujols this season and beyond starts with the question about last season. How much of his poor performance can be attributed to the injuries – which Pujols says are now gone – and how much to the unavoidable toll of age?

To Angels hitting coach Don Baylor, who watched Pujols from the opposing dugout for much of his time in the National League, there is no doubt health was the major factor.

“He’s not a top-half hitter,” Baylor said. “He’s a leg-drive hitter. When you have injuries like he had in his legs, you are all top side. Now it looks like he’s getting his legs a lot more involved in his swing, and that’s where his home runs come from.”

With his legs, Pujols of 2014 is a player Manager Mike Scioscia hadn’t yet seen with the Angels.

“In the last couple years we’ve had him here, this is the best foundation he’s had,” Scioscia said. “This is as healthy as he’s been. We’re starting to see some of the swings he can put on a baseball on a consistent basis. It’s been fun to watch.”

General Manager Jerry Dipoto agreed that Pujols has been “remarkably close” in the early going this season to the way he was in his prime.

“It’s been really fun to see,” Dipoto said. “We saw this from Albert in the second half of 2012. It’s not like it’s new, but it’s refreshing to see compared to the injury-plagued year last year.”

Pujols’ 2014 numbers – albeit it in the relatively small sample size of 20 games – also seem to indicate that he’s once again approximating that guy who hit 445 homers with the Cardinals. He has eight homers already this season. His adjusted OPS before Tuesday was 150, compared with 148 his final year in St. Louis.

His component stats – those that go beyond the sometimes random results of balls in play – are also similar.

With the Cardinals, Pujols struck out 9.5 percent of the time, walked 13.1 percent and hit a homer on 15.2 percent of his fly balls. Now the numbers are 8.0, 8.0 and 20.7. He hit line drives on 21.2 percent of his balls in play, including the homers, with the Cardinals. This season he’s hit line drives 20.5 percent of the time.

Other numbers do present some red flags. He made contact on 85.5 percent of his swings with the Cardinals, compared with 81.7 percent this season.

“He’s swinging through pitches that he used to hit,” said Dave Cameron, an analyst at FanGraphs. “That’s one of the reasons his walk rate is down. He can’t get deep in as many counts.”

Cameron, who has studied Pujols’ career in relation to models of other players at the end of their careers, isn’t ready to shovel dirt on Pujols just yet, though. Cameron, in fact, said Pujols’ decline in 2013 was so steep that it’s unlikely to be simply the result of diminishing skills.

“No one has ever fallen off the cliff that fast,” Cameron said. “We shouldn’t expect him to be that bad (in the future). I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a very good year this year, made the All-Star team. This may be one of his last good years, though.”

Cameron estimated that Pujols has “two or three years of above average, then two more of average. And then the cliff.”

Dipoto, who signed Pujols to a 10-year, $240 million contract, is hoping Pujols can push himself as close as possible to the end of that deal before reaching that “cliff,” if he reaches it at all.

Dipoto believes Pujols’ rare mix of skills, most notably the combination of a very low strikeout rate for someone with such power, makes him a candidate to maintain his production.

“We felt he was going to age better than most players,” Dipoto said. “At no point should you expect that a player at 37 will be like he was at 27. You just try to get an idea if he’ll age more gracefully than most, and I do believe Albert has a chance to be tremendously productive in his mid to late 30s.”

The Angels are banking on it. Perhaps the only way they get full value out of the contract is if Pujols leads them to a World Series title. In the meantime, the Angels will go along for the ride as Pujols climbs the all-time home run list.

He became the third-youngest player to reach 500 homers, so he should have more good years ahead of him than most of the other 25 did when they reached the milestone.

He needs just 84 more homers to leap all the way into the top 10.

Power, however, generally declines quickly as players reach the end of their careers, Cameron said.

Of the 25 other members of the 500-home run club, their average age during their final season was 39.5. Only four of them averaged 20 homers over their final two seasons. Three of them – Barry Bonds, McGwire, and Rafael Palmeiro – have connections to performance-enhancing drugs and the fourth – Mickey Mantle – was only 36 when he retired because of knee injuries.

Most of the players in the pre-PED era saw their numbers drop off Cameron’s “cliff.” Fifteen of the 500-homer players hit fewer than 10 homers in their final season.

Coincidentally, one of the exceptions to the rule shares a clubhouse with Pujols right now.

Last season, Raul Ibanez hit 29 homers in his age 41 season, the second most in history for anyone age 40 or older.

As a player who has some expertise on how to maintain skills longer than expected, Ibanez said Pujols is a prime candidate because of how good he is and how hard he works.

“He’s obviously been great from the day he got to the big leagues,” Ibanez said. “Why can’t he be great till the day he comes home? I think anything is possible. I think he’s a world-class level of hitter and defender. As long as he stays healthy, he can be great ’til the day he retires.”

Related Links

User Agreement

Keep it civil and stay on topic. No profanity, vulgarity, racial
slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about
tragedies will be blocked. By posting your comment, you agree to
allow Orange County Register Communications, Inc. the right to
republish your name and comment in additional Register publications
without any notification or payment.